The discovery of the graves of suspected vampires in Bulgaria may turn into a tourism gold mine, according to local news reports.

During excavations of a monastery in the city of Sozopol, Bulgaria's National Museum of History says it unearthed two skeletons that showed the deceased person had been stabbed through the heart with an iron rod.

"This was (the) customary way (in) Bulgarian medieval tradition to deal with people which were presumed to be vampires," the museum's website says.

People at the time of the burial of the skeletons, about 700 years ago, thought that stabbing the corpses multiple times with an iron rod through the heart would prevent the dead from rising and attacking the living, museum director Bozhidar Dimitrov said, according to a report from the Sofia News Agency.

Big lines for vampires could pump even more blood into the country's expanding tourism industry. Bulgaria led the European Union last year in the increase in hotel occupancy by foreigners, with numbers up almost 20% over the previous year.

No stats on how many of those folks slept with the lights on, however.

soundoff(317 Responses)

Christen

I have no idea what an assumed vampire grave in Bulgaria has to do with politics, but what ever. None the less I've been fascinated by vampire stories and what not since I was a kid. They have a similar thing in Galveston TX where the locals staked the bodies of people they believed were vampires.

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